(typing off the top of my head, might not compile)
Since Unity 4.3:
In the shader, instead of writing Cull Off, write Cull [_MyCullVariable], the value will be fetched from the material or global float/int variable _MyCullVariable then.
You could have it be part of material, e.g. inside Properties block:
[Enum(Off,0,Front,1,Back,2)] _MyCullVariable ("Cull", Int) = 1
That Enum thing in front will make it be a combobox in the UI. Values match with UnityEngine.Rendering.CullMode enum.
And then from a script, you can do:
material.SetInt ("_MyCullVariable", (int)UnityEngine.Rendering.CullMode.Back)
Look at other enums in UnityEngine.Rendering namespace for various values (for Blend modes, Stencil, ZTest etc.)
However, you can not control these variables from a MaterialPropertyBlock values; they really have to be set on the material itself or as global shader properties.
Note that using this thing (controlling gfx states via material properties) is a tiny bit more expensive than regular, particularly:
- When changing the value on the material, some of underlying graphics states (e.g. DX11 states) have to be rebuilt. This is a cost that happens on change.
- When you have stuff driven by global shader properties, then it's marginally more costly to apply the material too, since it basically has to check "did anything from globals change that might need rebuild of my states?"
I should stop being lazy and write some decent documentation of all this
To all those who might come here, do everything and still not see any combo box or toggle,
If you are editing a built-in shader, there's a high chance that unity is using a custom editor to render the shader layout.
All you need to do is to put this line at the end of your shader, before the close curly bracket of the section:
CustomEditor "UnityEditor.ShaderGUI"